The Sea Dragons
by ArguablySo
Summary: Marcus Geraldi is a middle school boy who has a horrible phobia of the ocean. How will he deal with it when he's forced to protect the magical creatures of the sea? Especially when he had no clue he was meant to in the first place? This is entirely an original character story, set in the same universe. The show characters will not appear in this story at all. No pairings/romance.
1. Marcus

_**Hello, reader! Welcome to my first story! I hope you enjoy it, and please leave a review telling me what I can fix and what I can improve on.**_

_**~Arg**_

In ancient times, the Dragon tribes came together as a council to protect their world from the humans that sought to bring its destruction. They chose from their great families one dragon to protect the magical creatures of specific regions, wherever he or she may live. The duty is passed down from generation to generation, to the firstborn of the dragon's family.

This way, the magical world became well protected.

But what of the water dragons?

Marcus grumbled as he messed with his somewhat spiky slicked back blonde hair. "This is stupid," he whispered to himself as he flipped over his test. He doodled on the sidelines of the page. This wasn't advanced enough for him. Fractions? That was easy. These other kids were just stupid. They'd proven that they couldn't handle even simple arithmetic. This wasn't elementary school. No, it was middle school. Come on, guys. Wake up and smell the algebra

Well, whether or not it was dumb, he was stuck in arithmetic with all of the idiots. With a sigh, he glanced around with dark brown eyes for his friends. He quickly spotted redheaded and tall Zia, the sporty short haired girl who always seemed way too cheerful and excited. Even then she looked happy, her green eyes bright with passive glee.

Marcus turned his gaze to the back corner of the room where his friend Moe was sitting, her pencil being bitten between braced teeth and her big black boots up on her desk. She didn't ever seem to care, and when she did, she never showed it. No one seemed to ever care what she did, either. She may have been disrespectful, but she'd never really broken any rules. Well, except for dress codes. She always wore skirts that were way too short and shirts that showed way too much of her slim waist. Marcus briefly wondered why Moe was really such a good friend, and the only logical answer he could come up with was that she made such a great foil to Zia.

Something made Marcus's breath suddenly catch in his throat. He coughed. Zia and Moe immediately both looked at him, Zia with worry and Moe with an eyebrow raised. He sighed, glad no one else stared at him.

Class ended a few minutes later. Marcus handed in his dragon-covered test. The teacher smiled at his drawings, amused.

"So," Marcus said as his small friend group met up outside. "Are we rollerskating today?"

"I'd love to!" Zia smiled. "Moe?"

"Sure, whatever," Moe replied, smirking a bit. Her dark hair was falling in front of her face again, especially the dyed dark green streaks in front.

The group then put on their own pairs of rollerblades, save for Zia, who used truck skates, and headed to the skate park. Marcus left after both Moe and Zia were called to their respective homes.

He walked up to his house feeling apprehensive. He had a strange feeling about today. Marcus opened the door cautiously. Nothing seemed to be off, so he walked right in. "Hi Mom," he called out as he put down his backpack.

"Hi, Marcus. How was school?"

His tall blonde mother appeared from the kitchen, her hands covered by oven mitts. Marcus could smell fish. The scent made him hungry, strangely. He'd never really had a craving before...

"Fine," he answered. "We had a fractions test today. It was way boring. I already know this stuff."

"Of course you do, dear," his mother smiled. "You're a smart boy. Dinner's almost ready. Go get your sister and wash up, please."

Marcus sighed and climbed the stairs to go knock on his sister's door. Meranda opened the door, her golden hair tied up in a ponytail for once. That meant that she'd been either drawing or working on homework. Probably drawing, since it was already kind of late. "Dinner," Marcus told her, before he went downstairs to meet up with his mother and father.

Mr. Geraldi, Marcus's father, was reading the news on his cell phone. Marcus scratched at his neck as he waited for dinner to be set on the table. Meranda hurried down the stairs, her hair no longer tied back and her teal sweater on. Food was set onto the table.

Marcus quickly grabbed some of the fish and ate it slowly. It was strange. Normally, he wasn't such a fan of fish. He hadn't expected to like it as much as he suddenly did.

Then again, he was nearly fourteen. That meant that his tastebuds were due to change around then, right? Yeah, that made sense.

Mr. Geraldi gave a heavy sigh. "Our stocks are down another two percent," he said. "At this rate, we'll lose the company..."

"Sell," Marcus said suddenly. His family glanced at him strangely as he kept shoveling fish into his mouth.

"What?" Mr. Geraldi asked, sounding greatly confused. Marcus swallowed.

"Sell," he repeated, sounding bored. "Tomorrow. Then buy the next month."

"Why?"

Marcus shrugged. He didn't honesly know why. It was just a feeling he had. He scratched at his neck again as his parents gave each other worried glances. Meranda poked at her fish with great disinterest. "You gonna finish that?" Marcus asked her. She shook her head and he took her plate.

"Since when do you like fish?" Meranda asked him boredly.

"Since recently, I guess," he answered casually. "It's around that time where people's tastes change for me."

"That happens?"

Marcus nodded, finishing his fish. He yawned, scratched at his neck, and went up to bed. His parents gave each other another concerned glance before they began cleaning up.


	2. A Breath of Fresh

_**Sorry for the short chapters; they'll get longer! If I'm wrong about that, there will at least be a lot of them!**_

_**~Arg**_

The next morning, Marcus found himself coughing constantly. Breathing felt... strange, almost as if his chest was tight. It hurt some, but Moe would call him a wimp if he cut out school for something so petty as a cough. He just hoped he wouldn't give it to anyone else.

He got ready for school (no thanks to Meranda hogging the bathroom) and headed downstairs with his backpack already on his back, and coughing following his every few steps down. His throat felt so... dry. Mrs. Geraldi heard his coughing and hurried over to him.

"Marcus, dear," she said with great concern. "Do you need to stay home today?"

Marcus shook his head. "I'm fine," he told her. "Just something stuck in my throat."

His coughing did slow down later that day, and he stopped thinking about it much. He met up with Zia and Moe at the front of the school. When he coughed a few times, Zia seemed worried.

"You sick?" she asked cautiously. He shook his head and scratched at the side of his neck.

"I checked. No fever or anything... Man, I'm thirsty. Moe, do you have an extra gatorade?"

Moe pulled a gatorade out of her backpack and tossed it to Marcus. He smiled at her thankfully and chugged it down.

"Jeez, slow down, would you?" Moe said sarcastically. "It's like you've never had water before.

"Water," he repeated. "Man, I'm still thirsty."

"After a whole bottle of gatorade? That you drank in one go?"

"Yeah. I dunno, maybe I am sick," the blonde boy sighed. "Still, I'm thirsty and I need water. I'll be right back."

He left to go refill the gatorade bottle with water and proceeded to chug that too. He then refilled it again and went back to where his friends were waiting. He was about to say something, but the bell rang just then. He coughed some more on the way to class.

And in class. He tried his best to keep quiet about it, but his cough wasn't letting up. Luckily, no one seemed to be paying much attention. He felt so thirsty... water... water...

...Water!

The simple want suddenly became a strange and desperate need. He couldn't breathe. He got up and ran out of the classroom. Seeing a fishtank in an empty classroom, his instinct forced him to dunk his head in it and take a deep breath.

Realizing what he'd done, he looked around at the fish circling his head. He was breathing. In a fishtank.

Little had he known, Moe and Zia had followed him. He looked behind him, keeping his head in the fishtank, to see the duo. He suddenly felt scared. Moe tapped her boot impatiently.

"So, any explanation as to how you suddenly managed to grow gills?"

Marcus had Moe call his parents. All she'd told them (upon Marcus's request) was to bring a bucket to fill with water and take him home. They seemed worried, but Marcus had a strange feeling that they knew exactly what was going on. And that his dad had taken his advice from the night before.

It didn't take them long to show up. Zia met them at the front of the school and led them to where Marcus was keeping his head immersed in a fishtank. His mother seemed disgusted by the tank.

"Get your head out of there before you catch ick," she scolded, placing the bucket full of water next to him. Obviously, she knew what was going on. 'How is this happening,' Marcus texted on his phone, and handed it to her.

She gave a sigh. "We'll tell you later. Your friends should probably know, too, since they've already seen your gills. We need to get you out of here, though, so hurry up."

Marcus did as he was told. He held his breath for moving to the bucket. He held his breath again from there to walk out into the hall. He kept holding his breath until they made it to the car, where Marcus immersed his face in the water once again, assured privacy. This was so stupid, and so embarassing. This didn't even make any sense. How in the world did he grow gills?

His parents soon joined up with him, having signed him out for an 'asthma attack'. Marcus could somehow tell that it was the same excuse they had used when they had been in the same situation. At least he wasn't so thirsty anymore.


	3. The Pool

_**Very short chapter is very short. Sorry! I haven't had much time lately...**_

_**I might go back and fix some things. I'm finding little punctuation mess-ups and spelling mistakes, and I'm a stickler about such things. The thing is that I don't know how to do that on this system. I'll figure it out eventually, though. Don't worry!**_

_**Anyway, I hope you enjoy, reader. Tell me what you think, please.**_

_**~Arg**_

They drove home in relative silence, especially since Marcus couldn't really hear what his parents said at all, and he couldn't really talk to them anyway. When they got home, they filled the pool with chlorine-free water as quickly as they could and had Marcus change into a bathing suit. He did so and hurried into the pool, a bit nervous at the fact that he was stepping into a body of water that didn't contain chlorine. He had to constantly remind himself that it was only his own pool. He sighed at his own thalassophobia. He was sure it would bite him one day.

The water was cold, but he could breathe. He swam around for a while, trying to warm up. His father put a hand in the pool and noticed it was cold, then started boiling water and pouring it in. Gradually, the water warmed up and Marcus was more comfortable. Marcus then began scratching at his ears. Soon enough, he became able to hear things underwater with his finlike ears the same way normal ears can hear things above water. Seeing this change, his parents climbed into the pool wearing bathing suits and transformed into dragons obviously made for water.

"We owe you an explanation," Mr. Geraldi sighed, his new red form swimming with great ease. Mrs. Geraldi nodded her silver head.

"We're dragons," she said. "Sea dragons, but dragons nonetheless. We could tell when you started eating fish that this would be happening soon, but we didn't expect it so soon. It looks like you're maturing in one big burst!"

Marcus made a sort of 'glub' noise.

"You'll probably be stuck in here a while," Mr. Geraldi told him. "Until you can control your transformation. Once you can, you will be taught to use your dragon powers to protect the magical creatures of the sea, such as the Kraken, the shark people, and the mer-people of the deep."

"Of course, that may be a bigger challenge for you than it was for us," Marcus's mother admitted. "Because of your ocean fear. But you'll need to get over it quickly. Either way, you'll probably breathe a bit easier with salt in the water, so we're going to salt it. Your lungs may be pretty sensitive for a while. If you're at school and the sudden need to breathe in water comes up again, you'll have asthma as an excuse to get out and do so before you suffocate on dry air."

Marcus made another glubbing noise, though it was much more audible that time, as he seemed to be growing a snout.

"There aren't that many sea-dragons in the world," Mr. Geraldi continued. "So the dragon council may assign one of us to teach you about your powers. Each sea dragon also has one power that belongs normally only to another magical species. For instance, I can fly in the air."

"I can cast spells with a snap of my fingers. Or claws, rather," Mrs. Geraldi giggled. "We have reason to believe that you have precognition.

Marcus tilted his head in confusion.

"Future-sight," his mother clarified. Marcus thought about that.

"I have to get back to work," Mr. Geraldi sighed. "Marcus, you relax while your mother salts the water and gets you some fish. We'll tell Meranda all about this when she gets home."

Marcus nodded and sat on the pool floor as both of his parents transformed back to human and swam out of the pool. He grumbled under his breath and moved onto his back, looking at the water's surface above. His back hurt. He had no doubt that he was growing a tail.


	4. Meranda

The water became gradually saltier as he started swimming around again. Marcus was starting to feel like an animal, stuck in a fishbowl while his owners fed him from above. He needed to ditch the gills somehow, and get back on land. Play video games, do homework, do something. He had a long tail at that point, with a fishlike or eellike fin portruding from its end. His fins, he'd noticed, were a dark blue with highlights the color of his hair, and his apparent scales were turning his skin a green color. An awkward question came to mind after a short while. He had to use the bathroom.

He raised his new claws above water to wave his mother over. She came to the edge of the pool and ducked her head in, transforming her snout, eyes, ears, and gills. "What's the matter, Marcus?"

"I need to go to the bathroom," he admitted awkwardly, not used to his new snout. "What am I gonna do?"

"Hmm. Hold your breath, and be careful of your tail. Don't worry about the water, we'll clean it up."

Marcus sighed and swam with increasing ease to the stairs leading out of the pool. He hurried to the doorway, then gave a second thought and went to the edge of the pool to take a new breath of water. He then continued on his quest toward the bathroom. What his parents ended up doing was filling the bathtub in there with water so that he could take an extra breath to get him back to the pool.

Mrs. Geraldi brought a beach ball and filled it with water for Marcus to play with. With his arms turning into webbed flippers with claws, holding things was getting a little awkward, so the ball was useful for practicing picking things up. He thought about how absurd all of this was, though at this point he had to believe his parents. Seeing all that had happened that day, what reason did he have to not believe them?

His mother saw him practicing picking up and putting down the ball, so she threw some other pool toys in to the water. A hula hoop, a rope, pool noodles, an inner tube, pool rings, and water guns were tossed into the pool at random. Marcus certainly had plenty to mess with. He especially appreciated the inner tube and pool noodles. He was sure learning how to deal with both sunken and floating objects would be highly useful for when he started going in the -gulp- ocean.

He thought this while playing with a pool ring, which he then got stuck around his snout. He panicked briefly about it, but once he got it off, his mother had brought fish. He took a deep breath and stuck his head above water. She threw the fish at him, to his surprise, and he did his best to catch it. He failed, of course, but after a few tries and new breaths of water, he managed to start catching the fish in his mouth. He found that raw fish was even better than cooked fish, as his mother had bought sashimi.

It was only a few more minutes before his sister came home. He stuck his head above water again, and managed to only barely understand what was being said.

"-heard that Marcus went home early today. Is he okay?" His sister sounded concerned.

"Why don't you come see for yourself," Mrs. Geraldi suggested, leading Meranda toward him. He watched Meranda walk cautiously and confusedly toward the pool with a curious worry. She looked around. Marcus popped his head up further above water. Her eyes fell on him as they widened. At first, she didn't say a word.

"M-Marcus?" Meranda ventured, highly uncertain and almost frightened by her brother's draconic appearance. "You're a ...dragon..."

"Yes, he is. And you are, too, my dear," their mother informed her. "A cute little sea dragon girl. Now, why don't you take a swim with your brother? He's pretty much stuck there for now, and I'm certain he's bored."

Meranda seemed unsure at first, but she had no proof that her mother was wrong. She changed clothes to be in her bathing suit and stepped into the pool. "That explains why the house is flooded," she sighed. "Alright, big bro, just don't eat me and we should do fine."

He raised a dark blue line over his eye that had likely replaced his eyebrow. He didn't seem to like that comment. He swam to the other end of the pool to avoid her teasingly. She followed him, and he swam effortlessly to the other end yet again. She huffed, and did her best to chase him, but he was much too fast. There was less doubt in her mind then that this creature was indeed her brother.

"Hey Marcus," she said, annoyed. He looked at her with curiosity. "We're in seawater. The water's so nice and salty, and I'm sure we could get sand and kelp and live stingrays in here too."

Marcus felt a large hole seemingly open up through his chest as a wave of fright washed over him. He jumped out of the pool using a tactic similar to a dolphin's, and flopped a bit on the poolside, having forgotten to hold his breath. He coughed before ducking his head underwater again.

"Alright, now I'm a hundred percent sure you're my brother. Why are you so scared of the ocean, anyway?"

He glared at her in reply. She scratched at her neck nervously. "I'm thirsty," she told him quickly. "I'll be right back."

He watched her with great curiosity as she chugged a glass of lemonade, then quickly got some water to chug that down too. She scratched at her neck, seeming confused.

"Come on, sis," he whispered to himself, feeling great concern for his sister. "Get back in the pool... Get back in the pool..."

She chugged half a glass of water and brought the other half with her back to the poolside. Marcus brought his ears and eyes above water again to listen to and watch her.

"I think I've had enough swimming for one day," she told him. "I'm gonna make some tea and go get dressed."

Marcus brought his head entirely above water and shook it rapidly. He grabbed her leg and pulled her into the water quickly. She was surprised by this, it having been very sudden, and didn't have a chance to hold her breath. She ended up breathing in a good amount of water before sinking to the bottom of the pool. Both she and Marcus felt a great wave of fear wash over them, before Meranda took another curious breath of water and exhaled the air she had left in her lungs. Marcus gave a great sigh of relief.

Meranda looked at her older brother with great confusion and slight panic. She tried to say something, but all that came out was a glubbing noise. Her ears were already turning into fins.

"So much for being done with swimming for the day, huh, sis?"


End file.
